La cassaria : comedia
La cassaria is a 1546 Italian comedy by Lodovico Ariosto, printed in Venice by Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari for a reading public. Its pictures are small woodcut historiated initials, each framed square letter holding a scene of figures, a house, sheep, or a seated man, plus a block of verse beside a tiny interior scene; a designer might borrow their compact framing and the way figures fill a letterform.
